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Listana – Unveiled

Hailing from Turkey, Listana are a Turkish female fronted progressive metal band with symphonic influence, and Unveiled is their impressive debut EP. By combining traditional Eastern melodies with their great progressive sound, including the singing in their native Turkish, they’ve got an exotic element that brings a certain freshness to the genre.

With an eastern flute melody, the opening track Istanbul: Birth of a Dream is great. A beautiful synth presence provides a gorgeous backdrop for chunky progressive guitar riffs and lovely keyboard melodies. With great tightness, the keyboards, heavy guitar riffs and technical bass twang all play off each other brilliantly and the band have a keen ear for melody. Fulya’s voice is rather high pitched and imbued with an exotic quality with her accent, and when combined with some of the traditional melodies the band play it works really well. In places it sounds a little fragile but for the most part it’s very good.

Hasret is particularly good with a catchy main riff, and mystical sounding keyboards playing an ethereal Turkish melody whole a frenetic drumming performance is full of creativity. The guitar and keyboard solos are particularly good, filled with energy , exciting and well done thanks to the musicians’ technical ability. Fulya’s voice is at it’s best on The Legend of Hellespont, her softer vocals sounding beautiful and dreamy in that Turkish accent, it’s her best performance on the album, and the guitar solo and pounding drums are convincing in another quality track.

Overall it’s a great EP from Listana, and with the eastern melodies and Fulya’s accent being incorporated well with impressive progressive metal they have an original sound and don’t simply worship at the feet of some of the bigger bands in the genre. With a keen sense of melody and atmosphere they’re a band who’s upcoming debut album in 2015 is highly anticipated. Recommended for fans of Stream of Passion, another band with that keen sense of melody.